<p>What is the difference between compassion and pity?</p>
<p>Thank you again for your help!</p>
<p>Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. versus sympathy. In the college app context, you show compassion by taking some action, engaging.</p>
<p>Many use them as symonyms, and some dictionaries indicate that too. Much like lookingforward says, the subtle difference seems to be that with compassion, a person person might actually take action to alleviate the misery.</p>
<p>I just finished a book “The Cruelest Month” by Louise Penny where one of the characters talked about this exact concept. She described it as “the near enemy” two emotions that look the same but are opposites. In this case compassion includes empathy where you see the person as an equal. When you pity someone you feel superior. She also talked about love vs attachment and equanamity vs indifference.</p>
<p>All I can say is that Mr. T doesn’t have compassion for fools.</p>
<p>To me compassion has a more positive, supportive, nurturing connotation. Taking pity seems to have a somewhat negative or possibly condescending tone. There is a support group for parents who have lost children, known as “compassionalte friends”. Dont think it would have the same meaning if it were called “pitying friends”.</p>
<p>Agree that compassion is an uplifting, affirming emotion, but pity is not. Compassion is a lot of “But by the grace of God” or “Been there, it was awful”; pity is more “You’re in for a world of hurt if you keep doing that”.</p>
<p>Pity and contempt can coexist.</p>
<p>Compassion and contempt cannot.</p>
<p>Pity usually looks at someone and says “boy, look at the mess you made” and to a certain extent, there is smugness with it, too, IME. So you pity the guy who figured he would say 100 bucks by not paying his fire tax, then crying when his house burns down and so forth. In a sense, it can be saying “I really feel sorry you are so stupid and did that, I could never do that”.</p>
<p>Whereas compassion is “that is horrible, what happened to you, I can understand how you feel, you try to do the right thing, and it comes back to bite you”. It is acknowledging that they and you are human, and sharing in their ill fortune or whatever, rather then looking down on it.</p>